Wednesday 24 August 2011

Meeting with Managing and Executive Director

Julienne scheduled a meeting tomorrow where I will present the findings of my report to Edward and Marike.The main message is that there is no need to panic.
1. THE WEBSITE: The school's website is in comparison with other faculties in a good position. This has to do with the novelty of the web, the work beeing done before the 9.august 2010 and the general somnambulism it invites. By comparison with the school's main competitors it does a good job. The integration of social media channels is for the most part accomplished (with the exception of twitter) and the remaining themes (Post graduate education, Press section) are under development. As an electronic equivalent to printed brochures it serves its function well. Albeit some technical problems seem far from beeing even acknowledged. The future goal is to enhance the existing website in accordance with the regulations to become more product and client focused.

From the organisational setup it becomes apparent that this is a cumbersome process. In 2011, SBE payed 30.000 Euro for the Content Management System and 65.000 Euro Consultancy costs via DVO. Although this numbers are veryfied by the MUO controller, nothing in the DVOs at SBE verifies them. From 2012 on the school does not pay anything for the website according to the MUO controller. Over the course of one year approximately 30 persons have been trained (for half a day) in the CMS and gained access rights to it. Together with the costs I (0.8ft) and my assistant(declaration basis)"produce", these make up the total costs for the "webproject" for SBE.
The performance of the CMS is by any standard poor. It is no improvement to the previous one, introduced 2007, in terms of usability or flexibility. For more information and arguments please consult the report or search this weblog for GX. Overall there is no documentation of preexisting online activities and no in-house knowledge on web development in general. External parties are hired to implement online activites for amounts that bear little resemblance to the actual work going into them. Other online activities are outsourced to former students that become future contractors knowing too well about the expecations and knowledge of their clients. All this factors contribute to the dissatisfaction and realities of the schools online activities. Todays job and yesterdays tool are incompatible and cause more stress and anxiety than the situation demands. The idea of equipping persons who are foreigners to the online world with stone age tools is successfully implemented across the UM. After working one year in this environment I came to the conclusion that the real dissatisfaction steams not from the inadequacy of the tools but the failure to address the demands of the job they are supposed to do. For more information please consult the extended report.

2. THE REPORT As an electronic brochure the school's website is the number one source of information for students from all over the world. However, having said this there is a major obstacle. Despite the rather frustrating experience with its online activities over the last four years the number of students is skyrocketing. Even in the market of prospective students interested in the school's programme there is no shortcoming; thus no supply problems. This indicates that the school's main business takes place in a demand driven market. It is apparent that students don't decide to study in Maastricht because of the layout, structure or information provided by us. The good reputation of the school, its proximity to their homes, PBL and the prospect of a good job attract prospective students to Maastricht.

Future strategies focus on Data mining tools and a wide array of instruments to master the art of behavioral targeting to tailor information relevant to the individual. With the exception of International Business the school's programs attract eight to twenty nine youngsters per year. Using these instruments it becomes possible to increase the efficiency of current marketing efforts by focusing rather than diffusing its energies. By centering on programs, increasing their visibility on facebook in combination with an institutionalized proactive and personalized approach the report argues for more awareness and a pragmatic point of view on social media to realize the schools marketing goals.


3. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: With a shift from government to privately funded operations formal education institutes increasingly tap into markets where informal educational institutes have their stronghold. Companies like Evaluserve provides global market research, Crossknowledge provides distance learning solutions, InterActive provides professional qualifications and postgraduate degrees. InterActives' description of one package also offered by SBE (CIMA) reads:

High Quality Tuition Videos** of 30 hours HD lectures
Expert Lecture Notes to accompany the videos
A flexible study solution which is available to you anywhere, anytime. (Ipad/Iphone ready)
Electronic study notes to support your study
Marked mock exam
Tutor support
Pass First Time Guarantee
Ultimate Confidence Booster

for 1500 Pound and you get a iPad2 for free!

In addition to the packages that resemble the schools executive master programs with the same title tutorial videos, study material in PDF or ebook format can be purchased separately online.

The second shift of importance in the educational landscape is caused by the proliferation of online communication and the internet as a great teaching machine. As a service environment that includes players like IBM and Google (which by the way offer there own business education programs) it envelops all existing ones in a single uniform web of ondemand knowledge. The response of universities to their diminishing role as "the guardience of knowledge" was to focus on skills rather than facts. Since facts are available everywhere and every time almost for free what gained importance in the curricula from the 70s on wards was the development of skills as a coproduction process. At the school it is problem-based learning that is institutionalized as the main metaphor of this development. However, this enveloped service environment that young people find today outside the university teaches them far more eloquently and potent than everything the university has to offer. Everybody who has a gmail account looks with anguish eyes to the university web mail portal. Likewise does the smartphone of roughly 80% of SBE's students outperform the personal computer they find in the hallway. A look into the amount of online learning material available for any subject currently taught at the school of business and economics sends shock waves to everybody believing that the business model of the past is continuing to support a state funded bureaucratic behemoth ad midst the competition it faces in the new market.

These two shifts, the one driven by political-economic factors and the second triggered by advances in technology causing subsequent changes in attitudes, sentiments and psychic outlook of individuals, are trends that need to be addressed in any approach of business development and knowledge transfer situations. The main question here is how a valorisation of the school's core business can be achieved so as to match the demands of the market? The above example is just one of many of the kind of competition that the school faces. Here, existing knowledge is repackaged so as to meet the demands and realities of mobile and flexible knowledge workers. Such a platform is not conceivable within the setup provided by UM's "webproject" but already environmental fact of the market it is forced to enter. The main idea behind any valorisation is thus to make the transition from a provider of knowledge to a facilitator of conversation. This goes hand in hand with the transition from ICT as infrastructure to an empowering environment. Developing a platform, which is not an island solution but supports open APIs, that takes these shifts into account and allows for valorization of existing knowledge by repackaging it for new customers, devices and markets is recommended. A logical place to start this is the Service Science Factory in close cooperation initiatives inhouse.

4. SAVING COSTS

In terms of ICT services, ICTS competes with every other service provider on this planet. As a monopolist at Maastricht University it provides the school with a variety of services. However, little is known about the actual costs and a comparison with other service providers is difficult. The ICT sector is a fast changing, dynamic environment where the level of inflationary energy is very high. The costs of memory and performance are easier quantifiable than usability and compatibility. But both are under constant price pressure due to technical advance, development of new production methods and UI paradigms.
The web related service the school offers its students is an email address, access to software and the intranet but also the hardware in forms of personal computers, projectors, whiteboards etc. Not all these services are provided by ICTS, some are provided by ACO.
Outside these setups the majority (83%) of the school clients have a device in their pocket that outperform the PC's in the hallway. In the same vain, providers of social networking platforms empower an equally large part of them to share and exchange information more conveniently than the web mail service the university offers them. When it comes to personal webpages, a hot item on the list of academics, a similar observation can be made. ICTS offers something called "Webfolder" that allow students, staff and faculty members to host their own personal website. But since some years ICTS is not supporting it any more and no new system is even conceived. Since the costs are as hidden as this service unsupported the suggestion is to look at another another solution outside the usual UM setting.
Attached you find the documents about the Google App for Education and their offer for the Google Chromebook for Universities.



Thursday 11 August 2011

Talkinbusiness 2.0

Developing an online magazine is an easy exercise and especially simple when nothing needs to be done from scratch. The old version is here and demands little further explication. After some month of waiting for an test server: A virtual server running on an Windows Platform.
This was a big step taken entirely by our Authentication Department.
The target audience is clear: Business Professionals, Students, Staff and Faculty Members are the main group of people we are aiming at. The goal is to provide an attractive online appearance with up to date news and reports on the school's activities. In doing so we hope to increase the schools reputation among our audience. We want to be in the news and the best way is to make the news ourselves.
The technical setup starts with some thoughts of the CMS. It should do what we expect it do:
- run an online magazine
- provide different users with different roles with a intuitive back-end
- Cheaper than the current version and hosted on our own server
- Enough Support and a lively community

Of course there are many other demands on the system f.e. integration of SM, a Newsletter distribution system, dynamic front page, Monitor activity...etc. If 2000 hits per month is an optimistic estimation than the system should handle at least three times this much before the first problems become apparent. After all, Images, Videos and everything that can possibly reduce the bandwidth drastically is hosted somewhere "over the rainbow" in the cloud. A catchy title for an rather ancient technology! The choice is rather clear and given the nature of the operation also not very difficult. Cheaper means for free and WordPress fulfills all basic requirements.
The next step is to come up with a basic layout and structure for the website. A little graphic might help to envision the big picture before the details make you clean out the forest from the trees. Followed by discussion and debates on key issues like Categories, Picture here or there, Text one can sort out the things that are already there from the things that still need to be done.
The next step is to look for a theme that can be customized and utilized for the desired purpose. There one can spend some money to save time. Customization means to adapt it to the official color scheme, type fonts and house styles rules.
The next big challenge is the Newsletter system. The idea is that people can subscribe to the magazine by simply filling out a short web form. A double opt in process makes sure that the users are not machines and really do want to receive an email in their inbox with the latest entries. This system is a service that works seemlessly with the CMS and once configured produces the newsletters, handles the subscriptions and even provides templates. After some tests and the integration of subscribers info from the old site everything is in place. Almost everything.... Because who is the author of the articles? Who is the editor? Who takes the decisions that have nothing to do with the technical or managerial side of this project but with the content of the magazine itself?
I don't know this yet but for the rest everything is on the right track.

Ps. And never forget to map the domain!

Wednesday 10 August 2011

One year anniversary

When the Arab spring was still in its Dornroeschen sleep and Julian Assange was playing hide and seek with the CIA I started to work at the School of Business of Economics. One year ago on that very day did I became web content manager for an institute with 500 employees and roughly 3000 customers served at one time (pre experienced and post experienced together). A couple of months later did I successfully begged for enough money to hire an assistant for eight hours a week. Together we are responsible for the further development of SBE's main website and all related web projects.

This sounds like a great adventure. What did we accomplish? So far not much one might say from the outset. But given the fact that the school possesses no in house-knowledge, no inventory of existing online activities, no strategy nor vision on where to go with all the new memes we did not do such a bad job. The first tenets of an online communication strategy are out there. All major structural units are integrated in the new CMS or indistinguishable from it. New online projects are in the middle of the development - among it a exclusive social network for enrolled students and an online magazine for students and staff. Social Media is integrated and used to promote the schools branding targets and looks in comparison with its major competitors not that bad as many people may want to believe.

What did we learn? It's all about money. One 0.8fte + 0.1fte for entire website and service is a slightly crazy undertaking. But be it...

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Demystifying Admission

Coming back from an insightful chat with Ellen shined some light onto the dark side of the student recruitment process, namely the admission proceedure.
This proceedure is roughly divided in three steps to make this complex process comprehensible. I give you only the simple version to illustrate rather then explain.

In the first step our youngsters have to sign up in studielink. No, not the New Zealand version of it but this site from the dutch government. Once registered an XML file with all the information is send to the UM SAP/SLM system where it is processed. The applicant gets an confirmation email and depending on the university/program he or she is interested in studying recieves the corresponding login information.
In this first step of the process there are roughly 2,4 times more people registered than actually end up enrolling at UM. This is a huge number and also the first point of contact between the customers and us. Much information is available such as email, location, telephone number and the names of other universities/programes applicants registered for.

In the second step the registered applicants have recieved the login information to gain access to their profile in MY UM and ELEUM. This is where they upload additional documents, pay their tuition fees and add information relevant to the admission process. With the admission process starting in october there is enough time for applicant to upload all information one might think. But it is this process that takes long and causes for much dissatisfaction and ultimately lost customers. And while this one is the big barrier for dutch applicants, interested parties from other countries fail already in step one. The problem is according to Ellen communication.

The third step progresses in steps and differs for Master and Bachelor students and also for the "TunnelingMasters" (= Applicants for a Master program who did their Bachelor at the school). It is roughly a kind of ball game between Admission Officers and applicants. One can visualize it best when thinking about the status bar of your linkedIn profile. But the process is done manualy. While the workflow is straight forward the major obstacles for a successful application are manyfold. The workflow itself needs to be adopted on a yearly basis depending on new legislation. Technical problems occure due to the novelty (2008) of the SAP/SLM system as well as the need for staff to get aquainted with it. And students are lazy and don't fill out all the forms in time.
Overall the SCC (student service centre) checks if the registration is correct. The faculties themselves make sure that applicants fill out all necessary forms and pay the tuition fees. The ranking and selection is also the faculties job. At the end of this process the youngsters end up as enrolled students by June.

This is just an rough overview of the complex proceedure which is called admission. From the perspective of the schools "student recruitment activities" it is apperant that a proactive, personalized effort to increase the applicants' loyalty begins somewhere between step 2 and 3. In step one, after the studilink registration, youngsters can contact the Buddies & Buttons assistents for help. But this is a centraly organized activity and not proactive. It's kind of a helpline customers can call if they have problems with their dishwasher or Ipod.

Both agreed to look for a possibility to make the first contact, the moment when the XML file from studylink is in,  more exicting. Aiming to increase the dudes loyalty and leting them know that we care about him/her studying at SBE instead of Rotterdam it is necessary to be not too pushy. I don't know if this word exists but you know what I mean. There are many ways to engage with youngsters on this level. Getting their attention in innovative ways is the key. But waiting and hoping that they decide for Maastricht is not the right strategy. In particular for those niche master programs it would be a competitative advantage to engage in this early stage with our clients.